The dirty old white woman pushes a shopping cart full of trash and a doll's dismembered head and a set of paintbrushes and several beer bottles and a pair of mismatched leather gloves for the same left hand.

She screams: I'm not from around here and nobody knows my name. I could die here on this sidewalk amid the other discarded rubble and nobody would know for a long time.

She says: I am of the street now. The street knows me and understands me and saves me.

She whispers: Time was I lived in a nice house I had two children- a boy and a girl. My husband was a college professor And I was an artist. Then something happened and four walls could not contain me for they were my prison.

But when she says all this it sounds like:

Fiddle razzle frazzle bedazzle Scrotum name game and Kiss my behind his toes glumph and Warble. Waffle, and bluffly, arghhh.

She says all these things with spittle shooting from her mouth and landing on your Armani handbag and his fashionable Gucci loafers.

And she repeats again and again until you throw her a quarter just to get her to

move.

And you really don't know how she got to this place or where she's been.

And you really don't care so long as she gets the hell out of your face.